Incontinence is a condition in which there is an uncontrolled release of discharges or evacuations. Urinary incontinence refers to loss of bladder control resulting in involuntary or uncontrolled urination. Other forms of incontinence include faecal or bowel incontinence.
Incontinence is a normal condition of infants and becomes less normal as the child ages. For infants an understanding of the subject's incontinence events and patterns of incontinence can assist in determining when to start training and monitoring the infant for self-awareness and self-management of their continence.
For adults there is a range of recognised forms of incontinence including stress/effort incontinence, urge incontinence, overflow incontinence, dribble incontinence, functional incontinence and the like. Treatment options include behaviour management, medication and surgery. Treatment options can be improved by having a good understanding of the patient's incontinence events and patterns of incontinence; this can be achieved by charting a patient's physiological control of their bladder or bowel over a period of time. However, in circumstances where treatment is not available or is unsuccessful, the only option is to manage the incontinence events themselves. This typically involves the sufferer wearing an absorbent pad or diaper. Most adult sufferers of incontinence are elderly or suffer from some form of disability. Therefore, a significant portion of patients in care institutions such as hospitals, nursing homes, aged care facilities, geriatric institutions and the like suffer from various incontinence conditions.
To comply with regulations and protocols to ensure that these patients are adequately cared for, it is necessary for staff to conduct manual checking of patients suffering from incontinence. This must be done on a regular basis. Manual checks are typically carried out irrespective of whether the patient is known to have suffered an incontinence event, as often the patient is unwilling or unable to alert staff of the fact that an incontinence event has occurred. The need to conduct regular checks of patients for incontinence places a significant drain on the resources available in patient care institutions and also causes inconvenience and disruption to the patient, particularly while resting and during sleep. Manual checks by their nature will vary as to how well the checking is carried out and recorded and will therefore directly affect the efficacy of the care plan that is put in place to manage the patient's incontinence condition; for this reason checking processes that make use of sensor readings that are more reliable can be more effective.
Incontinence indicators and detection systems exist. Often these are complex sensors which are expensive and require manual insertion to a diaper or other absorbent article worn by the subject. Such sensors often involve complex arrangements of passive and/or active electronic components and as such, can require significant labour and material costs of production, in addition to the effort required to manually insert the sensor device into the diaper before it can be worn by the incontinent subject.
Automated incorporation of sensor devices into absorbent articles/diapers is complicated by the fact that these products are manufactured at high speed on an assembly line which typically turns out between 300 and 500 units per minute. Diaper assembly lines use an in-line process in which individual pad layers are fed from rollers, including compression and tension rollers which apply and adhere the various diaper layers together. Generally there is little lateral or longitudinal precision involved with this process and so it is difficult to reliably insert and position sensing components during the regular diaper manufacturing process. For these reasons, manually inserted sensors continue to be the preferred method of manufacture for sensors monitoring the wetness status of individuals suffering from incontinence conditions.
It would be desirable to provide a sensor design and/or manufacturing methodology which overcomes, ameliorates or at least improves upon the existing devices and their methods of fabrication and/or insertion into diapers and other absorbent articles.
The discussion of the background to the invention included herein including reference to documents, acts, materials, devices, articles and the like is intended to explain the context of the present invention. This is not to be taken as an admission or a suggestion that any of the material referred to was published, known or part of the common general knowledge in the patent area as at the priority date of any of the claims.